


Cry for Absolution

by forthegreatergood



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Getting Together, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Misunderstandings, Pining, not strictly canon-compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-24
Updated: 2019-07-24
Packaged: 2020-07-10 02:53:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 20,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19898671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forthegreatergood/pseuds/forthegreatergood
Summary: After spending six thousand years in Aziraphale’s company, the only thing Crowley’s sure of is that he can’t touch the angel without hurting him.  Too bad he never bothered asking Aziraphale about it.If Crowley could still feel the soft give of rich cloth under his clenched fists, surely Aziraphale could still feel the scorching heat of a demon’s hands on his skin.If they made it out of this alive, Crowley decided, if there was anything left of the world afterwards, he’d be damned a second time if he ever put his hands on the angel again.





	1. End It All

**Author's Note:**

> All characters property of Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman, and the respective production and licensing companies.
> 
> * * *
> 
> A huge thank-you to my long-suffering beta readers: [fursasaida](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fursasaida/pseuds/fursasaida), [Elsajeni](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elsajeni/pseuds/Elsajeni), [foxyk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/foxyk/pseuds/foxyk), and [TeapotBandit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TeapotBandit/profile)! Everyone went above and beyond the call of duty on this one!

It began, as so many things in Crowley’s long life had, by accident.

He hadn’t _meant_ to touch Aziraphale, hadn’t meant to leave his goblet so close to the angel’s, hadn’t meant to reach for it at the same time Aziraphale reached for his. Or at least, he hadn’t known he’d meant to. Once the mid-nineteen hundreds rolled around, there would be psychologists who would provide an apt bit of explanation--“mirroring,” a subconscious action in which two people establishing a rapport would mimic each other’s movements--for what he’d been doing, but with that bit of wisdom millennia in the future, all he could say for himself was that he hadn’t meant to brush the back of his hand across Aziraphale’s fingers.

Just a moment of skin against skin, these bodies that weren’t really theirs skipping against each other in the smallest of possible ways, the briefest of contact. Nothing compared to the jostle of the marketplace in mid-morning or the heavy, deliberate blows of a fight or the messy thrashing of coitus. 

Not that Crowley could picture Aziraphale participating in either of the last two--he knew this particular angel found violence distasteful and suspected that angels in general still knew fuck-all about fucking. Demons in general weren’t much better, except when it came to using lust as a weapon, but there were certain portions of the curriculum that became unavoidable when the charge was tempting mortals into sin. In Crowley’s experience it was a help and made things easier, but an angel didn’t technically _have_ to know anything about why people wanted something when the job was simply to keep them away from it. 

But Crowley had seen Aziraphale in the marketplace every day for the last few months, holding his own in a throng that wasn’t the least bit hesitant about using elbows, hips, or overloaded baskets to make a hole wherever they needed one. Aziraphale would happily ignore the press of the great unwashed if it meant a few handfuls of the best dates. Aziraphale would let the grateful widow clasp his hand and hang on his arm and bless him when he overpaid for her withered onions and shared his sweet almonds with her sad-eyed children. Aziraphale would wedge himself into a corner cheek-to-jowl with a shopkeeper and drink his tea--too sweet and swirling with spices--laughing and smiling for hours on end so long as none of the teeming mass of humanity could jog his elbow at the wrong moment and ruin both his tea and his robes in one go.

Aziraphale wasn’t in the habit of shying away from any of them; the worst offenders got a scowl and a scolding, but even that was only when they came close to bowling him over or stepping on his feet.

Aziraphale flinched away from that heartbeat-long slide of Crowley’s skin against his as if he’d been burned.

Crowley pretended not to notice, lifting his wine to his lips and gulping it down, focusing his eyes on the cup in front of him instead of the angel sitting across from him. 

Maybe he had been burned. Crowley had felt a tiny, pleasurable flicker of warmth that meant nothing, the same way his choice of rooms overlooking the marketplace with a particularly good view of Aziraphale’s favorite fruit seller’s stalls meant nothing. The same way his somehow finding some real enthusiasm for his assignment after hearing that Aziraphale would be in the city meant nothing. But Aziraphale could wander into and out of temples to his heart’s content and feel a tiny, meaningless flicker of warmth, and if Crowley tried the same he’d wind up scorched and regretting it. Maybe this was simply one of those things.

Aziraphale was giving him a nervous, out-of-sorts smile when Crowley finally lowered his goblet. “Good vintage, eh?”

“Best I’ve had in ages,” Crowley agreed. His voice was a little too loud, the syllables starting to blur a little on his tongue. Not that he’d had so very much, but perhaps he’d had it in a bit too short a time. Perhaps if he really worked at it he wouldn’t even remember that flinch come morning. He drained his cup and signalled for more, only to have Aziraphale wave off the serving girl. Crowley blinked at him. “Wh-- You. She’s leaving. She’s leaving, and she’s taking the wine with her.”

“Maybe it’s good enough to appreciate?” Aziraphale suggested gently. “Savor it, I mean?”

It fell into place, after a moment, where Crowley had seen that look on Aziraphale’s face before--that first time they’d been on the job together. That day when Aziraphale had artfully weaseled his way around what God wanted in favor of his own interpretation of mercy, that day when Aziraphale had done something Crowley had never imagined an angel could do, that day when Aziraphale had proven so much more interesting than Crowley had ever expected him to be. That day when it had begun to rain, and Aziraphale had stretched out his wing to shield Crowley from it without even thinking, and Crowley had suddenly realized that he’d forgotten what kindness felt like.

That expression had been on Aziraphale’s face when he’d looked out from the wall and watched his two erstwhile charges walking away into the wilderness with nothing between them and the hardships Crowley had accidentally brought down on them except the sword Aziraphale had given them. 

_Pity._

Crowley, at least, didn’t flinch. And what good would it have done, if he had? If his touch burned Aziraphale, that was at least something that the angel could pull away from. There was nowhere in the room Crowley could retreat to that would shield him from that look, no hiding from it. It was like the lake of sulphur, the fire clinging to his wings, oozing into the space between feathers, swamping him even as he tried to escape it: the only way out was through.

Crowley forced a smile, and he turned his empty goblet upside down. A single ruby drop gathered on the rim, and Crowley idly twisted the cup and set it back down before the drop fell. He’d made his point, insofar as he had a point to make, and there was no sense in making a mess, too.

“I’ll just…” He pushed himself to his feet, felt the smile wobble along with the rest of the room, and pulled himself together. The important thing in situations like these was to never, ever show weakness. Weakness had consequences. “Savor it, yes. Wonderful idea.”

They’d fill a bottle for him here, he was sure, but the thought of sitting in his rooms and tasting that sour edge of the angel’s pity along with the wine--of hearing that hesitant “Savor it.” every time he took a swallow--made his stomach turn. There were jugs of liquor to be had between here and his place. It was hard, foul-tasting stuff, but no matter. It would take the edge off his mind for an hour or two, let him think he’d misread everything, let him think Aziraphale liked his company instead of simply being habituated to it.

“I’ll savor it,” Crowley said again, more firmly this time, nodding to Aziraphale like he was confirming something. Aziraphale simply looked at him, bewildered. “Enjoy the rest of your night, yeah?”

Aziraphale paused, his lips pursing, and Crowley didn’t wait for some new pain to cross those comfortable features. He made his way to the bar, carefully navigating through tables and servers and other customers when all he wanted to do was run. 

It would be foolish to leave the tavern empty-handed, to make it clear as day that it had been not just a loss but a rout, and besides, he had his pride. His pride, and the wine he’d swallowed too much of far too quickly. It was just as foolish to make himself stay, talk the man behind the bar into pulling a bottle off the cask, shove silver into his hand when it only called for copper. Then again, if the only one he was hurting was himself, who had the right to stop him?

He could feel Aziraphale’s eyes on him the whole time, and he found himself sweating in a way he didn’t when he was being questioned by the ministers of Hell over some little irregularity or an allegation of indifference to his duties. There were consequences here. What could Hell inflict that Crowley hadn’t already borne? The only thing was dissolution, and at least then he couldn’t be asked to live with the aftermath. Aziraphale was an undiscovered country, a thing that could let him forget what he’d let his life become for days and days before he remembered again. A grace that could be rescinded, if he overstepped. If he misjudged.

Crowley stumbled from the tavern without looking back. When he got back to his rooms, he didn’t bother lighting the lamps. There were neighbors, and some of the merchants knew him by now. He didn’t want a knock at the door and a subtle request to join him for a drink, an even less subtle question about what the future held. Divination wasn’t his department, was it? They needed Orias if that was what they wanted.

Crowley dropped a jug of liquor on the table and weighed the bottle of wine in his hand, deciding whether he wanted more to throw it against the wall to see it explode into shards and spatters and spent misery or to try it after he was good and drunk and everything screaming in the back of his mind was too muffled to understand. He _could_ savor it, probably, if he got too drunk to think straight first. It wasn’t until he’d settled on the latter that he realized Aziraphale’s expression had been expectant. Crowley had neglected to invite Aziraphale back to his place.

Not that the angel ever accepted, ever would accept. But the taverns closed or their dinners concluded and then it was time for Aziraphale to retire to the cramped little room he’d rented down by the gates, and Crowley inevitably arched an eyebrow and smiled and said, “We could continue up in my rooms, if you want.”

It hadn’t occurred to Crowley to say it tonight, and even if it had, he wouldn’t have made the offer, couldn’t have stood it to see Aziraphale’s face go pinched and solemn or sad and evasive, couldn’t have stood it to hear some hollow excuse or flat refusal fall from his lips. But Aziraphale had expected him to say it, and moreover Aziraphale had seemed disappointed when Crowley hadn’t.

Crowley sat down heavily and rubbed his face. Aziraphale would never join him. Not for a drink, not for a bit of honey cake, not for the company. And Aziraphale clearly took no pleasure in rejecting the offer, always seemed a little wistful when he said no. 

_No, I can’t. No, I doubt my superiors would approve. No, it’s a bad idea._

If Crowley was being honest, sometimes he only extended the invitation to reassure himself that Aziraphale wouldn’t say, “No, don’t be ridiculous. You’re a demon. I would never.” 

That Aziraphale wouldn’t say, “No, I don’t want to.”

He’d never once imagined that Aziraphale drew any sort of… what? What was it he’d seen on Aziraphale’s face when he’d taken his leave and made it clear he’d be continuing the night alone?

The disruption of a pleasant routine. Crowley wrenched the cork from the jug with his teeth and spit it into a corner, then drank deeply. Aziraphale had been looking for some reassurance that things were all right, that Crowley wouldn’t do anything stupid, that there would be no embarrassing mess to clean up, that was all. Which wasn’t the worst thing in the world to see, but it was going to look a hell of a lot better from the bottom of the bottle.

* * *

After that, Crowley was careful, generally speaking, not to touch Aziraphale. It wasn’t that he was concerned about whether or not the angel liked him or felt comfortable around him or might even smile when he heard Crowley’s voice in an unexpected place or when he picked Crowley out of a crowd. He’d gotten very drunk one night and thought about it very hard and come to the conclusion that he didn’t care at all about any of those things. He’d even made a list of all the reasons he didn’t care about any of those things, and it had been quite substantial. He’d been very proud of himself over that list.

But once humanity invented those lovely dark glasses that let him hide his eyes from them whenever he wanted, it had become so, so easy to get used to people not flinching the moment they registered his face. 

With the glasses, he could sit on the steps of the forum, share a drink with a man, and learn a thing or two about what was going on in the city before he made up his mind about how--or whether--to carry out an assignment. There was the customary wariness of a stranger, maybe, depending on how confident his new companion was of their ability to talk, fight, or bribe their way out of any trouble that cropped up. There was no cringing, no bargaining with higher powers, no faces going pale and tongues going too glib or too stiff. He moved among them essentially unmarked, gliding along below the surface without troubling the waters unless he needed-- _wanted_ \--to.

It was like the silence of the desert after the din of the city, that comfortable anonymity, that freedom to do as he pleased with no one much the wiser. It was like being able to stretch his wings without feeling the catch and crinkle of burns that hadn’t healed quite right, a full range of motion unaccompanied by the fear of reopening old wounds if he used it. He could sit at a bar and drink, smile at someone and be smiled at in turn, talk about nothing and everything and be treated as no different than anyone else in the room. It was a relief, a thing to be pried from his cold, discorporated hands.

And so on the odd moments when he forgot himself and reached for Aziraphale--

Not that he _wanted_ to touch Aziraphale. Not that he wanted to touch anyone, especially after the choking, fetid hive of Hell, everyone piled in together, swarming with no room to breathe or move or turn around without bumping into someone, stepping on someone, hands on his back in an angry shove or on his arm in an angry pull, hissed curses in his ear for his clumsiness, hissing curses in someone else’s ear for the same, hands around his neck in an angry squeeze, this was never what he wanted, never what he’d thought would happen when he fell…

No. Not that he wanted to touch Aziraphale. The night he’d gotten very drunk and thought very hard, he’d come to that conclusion as well. But touching was what people did--sometimes casual and sometimes not, sometimes tender and sometimes with harder intent, sometimes to solicit and sometimes to impose--and Crowley had spent enough time among them with his newfound freedom and unremarkableness to have picked up a few bad habits.

And so in the odd moments when he forgot himself and reached for Aziraphale, that sudden, shocked, burnt recoil was like a knife sliding under his ribs from behind in a dark alley, like a stone from a catapult catching him in the chest, like the midway point in that first terrible drop when he’d realized that this was really happening, that he had been cast out. 

Flinching was no longer what people did when they saw him. He wasn’t used to it, anymore. And that it was Aziraphale doing it somehow magnified all of that, turning it back in on itself until it was a serpent eating its own tail, seeing a mirror-image enemy and biting itself over and over again in a frenzy.

Crowley had at least kept a tally of Aziraphale’s responses. It was instructive, now that he had his hypothesis. 

That first light brush of hand against hand had caused Aziraphale to flinch as if Crowley had hurt him. Perhaps it was simply the touch of bare skin on bare skin? No--the time Crowley had thoughtlessly slapped Aziraphale on the back through his robes after a well-wagered round of dice let them drink for free for the rest of the night, Crowley might as well have applied a live coal instead. Perhaps it was the pressure or force? No--the time Crowley had been too deep in his cups to remember why touching the angel was a bad idea, it had been a feather-light brush of his fingertips over the ring on Aziraphale’s finger. Aziraphale’s reaction had been more in keeping with Crowley sticking him with a pin, snatching his hand back and staring at Crowley with a mix of hurt and shock.

Any sort of physical contact with Aziraphale caused the angel immediate and consistent pain, and if it was deliberate that pain was served with an accompaniment of guilt and reproach. Crowley could change as many variables as he liked, Aziraphale was never going to do anything but recoil from his touch.

It wasn’t such a strange thing, when he considered it logically. He tried to keep up with fashion, he did his best to blend in with the locals, and when he was on assignment in one place long enough, he liked to decorate his lodgings as if Aziraphale might one day deign to accept his invitation. It was such a wonderful lie to wrap himself in--that warm, silken comfort of a nest lined with borrowed feathers. He shared his wine, and hid his eyes, and smiled at the right times. Humans looked at him and saw one of their own, provided they didn’t look too hard, which they rarely did. But what could Aziraphale ever really see except a warped image of what an angel was supposed to be? 

Singed wings, sallow skin, the sulky scowl that Crowley hadn’t been able to shake since the Spanish Inquisition… Even the angels who were frankly terrible at their jobs and had only missed falling by the breadth of their fingernails had that burnished look, that self-righteous glow that came from within. Crowley could never even rid himself of the sulphur that had seeped into his pores only to sweat back out again along with his nightmares, when he woke in the middle of the night, twitching and reeling and smelling it just as strong as it had been when he’d finally crawled out of the lake. Small wonder the angel looked on him at times and was moved to pity.

All those little moments of contact, all those times Aziraphale suddenly couldn’t stand to be near him, couldn’t look at him, had somewhere else he needed to be--Crowley could have recorded them in a logbook and read them back to himself like a bedtime story, whenever he needed to keep his head in the game. Whenever he got too comfortable on Earth and forgot what he really was.

He could have written them all down on loose leaves of parchment, too, mixed them in with all the horrors he’d taken credit for with Hell because they were happening with him or without him. Agent of Damnation, representative of the Fallen, deployed to Earth solely to make sure as many humans as possible shared his fate--there’d be a price to pay if anyone Downstairs ever found out he’d been shirking his duty. There was a price to pay as it was, when he looked around and couldn’t escape the knowledge that he’d been meant to make it all so much worse, but what else was there? Stage one glorious act of rebellion against Hell only to be cast aside and replaced by someone who’d do their absolute damnedest? If the simple act of putting his name to the crimes of humanity gave him that much more breathing room and that much more freedom, what was it hurting, really? 

Not that the answer to that question was ever far away--he knew what it meant to sign his name to a deed, knew the weight it hung around his neck. But he _hadn’t_. He wasn’t responsible. If he hadn’t found a way to hold back the tide, at least he could say without lying that he hadn’t even been there, hadn’t been paying attention, and then suddenly he’d been up to his hips in a wave of blood and tears and it had been like he’d never escaped Hell and he remembered all those reasons he didn’t want to go back and all those reasons he deserved to be there.

Did he really need Aziraphale’s pained withdrawal on top of all that?

Of course he did, because he’d never had an idea that wasn’t immediately carried out to the utmost of his ability and damn the consequences.

* * *

He hadn’t meant to. He really hadn’t. It was just that he’d thought, after Paris, that things were different. Aziraphale had seemed so terribly grateful for the rescue, and so terribly receptive to any and all suggestions about what they should do once they’d eaten and procured a few good bottles of wine, and Crowley had thought…

Well, he hadn’t thought. He’d simply acted. He’d wanted, and he’d needed, and he’d told himself it would be fine, and then he’d reached out and clutched at Aziraphale’s hand, and.

And it hadn’t been fine, which shouldn’t have been a surprise, because deep in Crowley’s heart of hearts, he’d _known_ it wouldn’t be fine. He’d simply lied to himself one more time, because it had worked out so well every other time he’d done it, why would he stop?

It had felt like the earth under his feet cracking open, when Aziraphale had wrenched his hand away, cradling it to his chest and taking a full step back like Crowley had turned into… precisely what he was.

Had Aziraphale even managed a complete sentence when he’d stammered “I have to go.”, or had Crowley’s stunned conscience filled that much in? It was difficult to remember, now. He’d retreated to his apartment--his absolute mockery of a home where every last thing stared back at him and whispered _“Would the angel like this? Would the angel find this beautiful? Would the angel run his fingers over this and delight in it?”_ \--and he’d vomited up the bile of the world, spit it out until he had nothing left.

He’d been empty then, his skull cavernous and echoing with everything he didn’t want to think about, and there had been nothing better to fill that hollow back up than whatever liquor was ready to hand and asked nothing more of him than the effort of lifting the bottle to his lips.

It had been amazing, spending so many decades dug deep into that comfortable haze. Humanity had got along swimmingly without him, inventing all manner of horrible things and ruining themselves in ways great and small, and so long as he occasionally sent in a memo claiming that this or that had been all his doing, he’d been left to his own devices. That those devices had been to sleep until the liquor wore off, at which time he woke panting and heaving from a nightmare that had simply been a memory, at which point he’d drunk until it no longer hurt in quite the same way, and then he’d gone back to sleep, well--that was no one’s concern but his own, was it? The only claim on him was Hell’s, and Hell was eminently satisfied with his work.

It had been amazing, right up until he’d woken up one day unbearably close to sober and realized that he’d never apologized to Aziraphale for taking his hand. He’d never even _tried_ to apologize, which was somehow even more unbearable than the look on Aziraphale’s face when he’d done it. He’d wanted to say something, anything, but the look of betrayal stamped on the angel’s features had struck him as mute as all those men who’d seen him as he truly was in some lonely place and felt as sure as anything that they were about to draw their last breath.

Sometime during those sixty years, he’d gotten a promotion, and he’d stripped his lovely, airy, comfortable apartment down to nothing more than what a single, solitary person would need to keep themselves and their bottles off the floor, and he’d let his borrowed body go even further to waste.

“And yet,” he murmured to his reflection, “somehow I’m no worse for the wear.”

It would last him the rest of eternity, wouldn’t it? He turned away from the mirror. Eternity--it still meant the same thing as it had right after the Fall, whether he liked it or not. That same weight settled on those same shoulders, and he could let himself falter under it, or he could find something that let him bear up until the Final Battle, and after that, who knew? Not him, that was for damn sure. 

What he did know, though, was that he couldn’t keep on like this. Even Hell couldn’t be duped forever, and even Crowley’s luck would eventually run out. And what was an unhealthy pallor or an unfashionable chop or even those serpent’s eyes glaring back at him from the glass compared to what he was? Nothing. It had only ever been nothing. Powder and perfume on a corpse to make the corruption bearable for the duration of the wake. He was one of the Fallen, and there was no escaping that, and he’d known that once. He was unforgivable, always and forever, a member of the unending, ageless rebellion. He’d been released from Heaven’s service, eternally separated from the divine.

He might no longer have grace, but he still had power, and he still had his freedom, and he’d had enough pride not to indulge in a pointless recantation even when he’d understood what his questions had cost him. So long as he had all that, he might as well use it for something other than wallowing in regret and self-pity.

Aziraphale seemed almost pleased to see him when Crowley asked to meet, which had been perplexing right up until Aziraphale had told him about what passed for a miracle these days.

“A nudge here, a gentle hand there,” Aziraphale said, shaking his head. “It’s better than fire and brimstone, of course, but it feels like… I don’t know. How is this faith’s reward?”

Not the sort of thing he could talk to another angel about, that was for damned sure.

Crowley for once, finally, had the good sense not to point out that the questions Crowley had asked right before the Fall hadn’t been so different. He simply shrugged and offered to buy a pot of coffee for the two of them, if the angel knew of any place decent to serve it. Aziraphale’s brilliant smile had washed away any thought of dulling it by bringing up the last incident, and Crowley had let himself think that, if forgiveness was forever off the table, then perhaps forgetfulness at least might be attainable, in small doses, from one of the divine’s more understanding agents.

It was a pleasant delusion that even lasted for a few years, completely unshattered, before Crowley came to the inevitable conclusion that Hell couldn’t remain ignorant of his deceit forever. Things were too big these days, too grand. It was one thing to take credit for the unprovoked slaughter of a few hundred villagers here or the riot and violent suppression of mill workers there, quite another to claim credit for the existence of dynamite and London’s slums. People wrote every last damn thing down now, and even the most far-flung frontier village could hear about something a mere week or so after it happened. There was evidence, piling up in great drifts and staying there long enough for anyone who cared to sift through it and catch him out.

There was only so long he could expect to get away with it, and it was even odds as to whether he’d just be demoted and punished or if something worse might be in store. Unless, of course, he could find a way to put his thumb on the scale, make punishing him costly enough that commending him was easier.

What Crowley hadn’t at all considered was Aziraphale’s reaction to his request for help. It was such a little thing that he was asking for. Aziraphale could have managed it in an afternoon without breaking a sweat or missing tea.

The angel hadn’t even been able to look at him, after he’d read the note. Crowley hadn’t been able to help studying Aziraphale’s profile, entranced. This was what he looked like when he was angry. Had Crowley ever seen it before? That banked glow that flared to life when Aziraphale had discovered some delightful new vintage or found a missing copy of some centuries-old work or witnessed a human doing something genuinely charitable was now bright and sharp, focused and scattered all at once, like the pinhole projections from a safety lantern. Beautiful and terrible, and Crowley wondered which of them would burn if he reached out now and touched that lovely hand.

“I’m not going to help you procure a…” Aziraphale had made a face like he might spit, then swallowed instead, his throat bobbing tightly. “A _suicide pill_.”

It hadn’t even occurred to Crowley that yes, he might use it on himself, mightn’t he? If it came down to it, if things were genuinely _that_ bad, he could go out on his own terms, comparatively quick and clean. It would make things too easy for the bastards, and it would hurt, but then it probably wouldn’t be much worse than when he’d hit the boiling pitch of the lake, and it would be over more quickly than that had. And if the only one he was harming was himself, who had the right to stay his hand? No one. He’d been cast out; if he had to endure the pain of belonging only to himself, he would claim the benefits as well.

But that was a plan to be executed only in extremis, when all else had failed and all hope was lost. For all its faults and flaws and pains, life was beautiful and even Hell could have its comforts when it wasn’t out to get him specifically. Crowley glanced at Aziraphale and that flickering core of righteous anger. No, now was probably not the time to assure him that it wasn’t what he thought, that Crowley had simply wanted a foolproof means of disposing of Hell’s spies if they got too close to the truth. Aziraphale wouldn’t be best pleased with a chipper, “Not suicide, angel, only murder.”

And then had come that moment, that knife under the ribs, that cannonball to the chest, that backhanded _fraternizing_.

Not friends. Not colleagues. Not the two of them adrift together, smiling and toasting and making each other’s lives easier and brighter and more bearable. No-- _fraternizing_. 

Crowley was the enemy, and Crowley wasn’t to forget it. Well, it took two to play that game, didn’t it? Crowley was a demon, yes, but Aziraphale was the one who’d looked on a demon and smiled, and invited him out for oysters, and looked so disappointed when he’d caught Crowley flat-footed and stunned by the gesture. Aziraphale was the one who’d let himself be tempted; Crowley wasn’t nearly good enough to have done it all by himself. 

It wasn’t fair, and for the first time in a very long while, Crowley let that echo, that cosmic, eternal _it’s not fair_ rattle around in his head a great deal louder than was quite wise.

And it wasn’t fair, was the thing. It wasn’t fair, and he’d been saying it since the beginning, and no one was ever going to listen to him. Not God, who’d banished him for it, and not mankind, who’d hear the words and then go do something awful or pointless or awful _and_ pointless about it without ever managing to change anything, and not the angel who sat there in judgment of him ten feet from a damned duck pond and then stalked away as if all their time together meant nothing. It wasn’t fair, and now it would be unfair and lonely. It would have been easier to stay a serpent, easier to let himself blend in with the mob down below…

Except that giving in to Hell was its own peculiar brand of hell, wasn’t it? Being on Earth was a comparative paradise, and Crowley had gone and ruined it for himself by trying to lure an angel into an arrangement, and for what? Slate blue eyes crinkling into a smile? That shy reticence blooming into agreement? That look of quiet joy replacing troubled sorrow when Crowley could distract him for a moment from the cares of the world? The visceral horror and pain when Crowley reached for more than he should?

It was a house built on sand, and he’d done it to himself, and if he hadn’t quite known what he was doing it was because he hadn’t wanted to know. Crowley watched the scrap of paper with its fatal request bob for a moment on the water, then let it catch the edge of his--

Wrath. It was wrath. Demons didn’t get regret, or sorrow, or remorse, or heartbreak. Greed and envy and the fury of disappointed stratagems, that was what he had to work with.

The paper caught the edge of his wrath and burst into flame. He watched it burn until it was nothing but ashes, and then he fed the ducks and watched them squabble over crumbs until something in his chest snapped like a dry twig under the weight of a man’s heel. He went home and threw away every stick and every thread left in his apartment that reminded him of a time when he’d thought “Aziraphale would smile if he saw this” before he’d bought something, given it pride of place, imagined the light in Aziraphale’s eyes if he ever accepted Crowley’s invitation to come home with him.

Demons didn’t get silken pillows and overstuffed divans and sun-drenched oil paintings of the tower at Babel before it had come crashing down on its architects. Demons had lairs, and bases of operation, and headquarters. Demons had things that recalled their purpose, and their power, and their pride.

It probably should have surprised him less to find himself with empty quarters when he'd finished.

* * *

That should have been the end of it, though of course it wasn’t. So long as Crowley remained free to walk the Earth and carry out Satan’s will, there was work to be done and reports to file and things to keep an eye on, and so long as there was that, there was Aziraphale. It wasn’t the same as it had been--there were no more favors, no more little smiles, no more cheerful invitations to dinner--but still, the angel was there.

The first time they crossed paths after the holy water incident, Aziraphale had turned away from him with fists clenched and head bowed and a quiet curse that of course it had to be Crowley. As if Aziraphale could have withstood another demon, a demon who meant it, a demon who didn’t care that Aziraphale was something unique among Heaven’s hosts. As if Crowley would risk it being anyone but him.

But they’d gotten on with it, hadn’t they? Settled back into their old routine, one fouling the other’s work and the other foiling the first’s schemes. Grudging acceptance of the old equilibrium and beyond that, silence. There were little moments here and there when Crowley was tempted to make another overture, to try to propose something better, something more efficient. They shared the same city, after all; surely it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if they went back to being on good terms? 

It helped that the first thing he saw when he came home and the last thing he saw when he left was the statue. _Evil Triumphant,_ he vaguely recalled the gallery’s proprietor saying. It was easy to envy that stone demon his ability to touch his stone angel, easy to envy the carving’s carelessness with his opponent. Crowley would be a fool to endanger himself any further for something he could never have, for something he shouldn’t want.

And then he’d gotten wind of those dim-witted Nazis and their just-clever-enough-to-be-dangerous double agent and the way Aziraphale’s latest burst of initiative had thrown him right into harm’s way, and where had all of Crowley’s best intentions and honest resolutions gone? Up in so much smoke. Aziraphale would never make it out of the little operation in which he’d been snared without serious injury or total discorporation. And what if Heaven balked at returning the angel to Earth after such a long assignment? They’d done it before, out of sympathy for the length of the exile or suspicion that an angel was getting too comfortable among mortals, and Crowley’d paid particular attention to those reports.

Viewed from that angle, it was simple self-interest to crash the party. If Aziraphale was discorporated and Heaven sent a replacement that there was no dealing with, it would be open war, and open war meant a great deal more work. And so Crowley had found himself hot-footing it down the aisle of the last untouched church on the block with every intention of blowing it up and having Aziraphale thank him for it.

Naturally, Aziraphale’s first accusation was that Crowley was behind all of it. And the look on the angel’s face when Crowley had pointed out that holy water was less difficult to lay hands on than a bottle of Coca-Cola these days…

It helped, afterward, seeing the relief wash over Aziraphale when Crowley handed him the bag containing his precious books. As if Crowley could forget a detail like that, after all this time. As if Crowley could stand to see that loss on Aziraphale’s face, that mourning for one more thing the angel couldn’t save. As if Crowley could overlook any chance at all of making Aziraphale grateful.

And it had, hadn’t it? Grateful enough to stand there in the rubble, clutching his books to his chest, and accept a lift home. Grateful enough to stand outside in the dark and ask if Crowley might like to come in for a bit of cocoa. There had been that moment, hanging there in time like a blood-red drop poised to fall from the lip of an upended goblet, and Crowley had imagined himself waiting while Aziraphale unlocked the door, lit a candle, and led the way into that soft, gentle cocoon of a bookshop. The first time Crowley had visited after Aziraphale had gone into business, simply standing in the middle of the room and closing his eyes had reminded him of what it had been like to huddle close under the angel’s wing that day at the garden. The bookshop had only grown more so with age and length of habitation. 

Crowley thought of the stone demon.

“Best not.” Aziraphale had seemed crestfallen, and Crowley had felt that treacherous spark of hope in his chest--and hope for _what_? He quashed it without letting himself think twice. Best not. Best to never have, but what was done was done. It was one thing to come to an arrangement, but this? “Head office has been keeping a sharper eye on everything these days. No telling who might see. Enjoy the cocoa, angel.”

Crowley had gone home to his apartment and stared at the statue for a full half an hour and told himself it was trouble well dodged. Aziraphale was fine, and Crowley wouldn’t have to worry about new blood in the field, and that was all that mattered. It hadn’t even cost more than a light scorching and some moderate disappointment, and those would both fade with time.

But he hadn’t precisely been lying when he’d made his excuses to Aziraphale, and the whole font of holy water just sitting there unguarded left him with the beginnings of an idea.

It took a while to put it into motion, of course--there was a war on, after all. People were hungry, and suspicious, and all too eager to decide the old rules didn’t apply anymore. Demons and angels both were running loose, and everyone was prying into things better left overlooked. But afterward, when the agents of eternal realms had grudgingly gone back to their regular assignments and the humans were so very relieved to be alive and done with it all and discovering how much fun everything could be all over again, it had been as easy as flashing a few quid around in the district that had embraced the new hedonism as hard as it possibly could.

It wasn’t really that Crowley had meant to spend so much time in Soho. It was dangerously close to Aziraphale’s territory, dangerously close to hearing a surprised, cheerful “Crowley!” from the other side of the street, dangerously close to seeing the angel pretend not to notice him and walk the other way, eyes averted. It was expected, though, for Crowley to see and be seen in the new capital of English lust, sloth, and lucre, to help guide this new generation of trail-blazers and taste-makers as they did their best to outdo the Romans, this time broadcast live to a viewing audience of the entire planet.

And there was something to be said, after all, for the novelty of being surrounded by people who wanted to touch him. It made for a nice change of pace, those girls climbing into his lap and those boys tangling their fingers in his hair, those hands pulling at his shirt and pushing at his trousers, and not a single one of them flinching away from him in the slightest no matter how much of him they uncovered.

It was Crowley’s turn to dismiss or permit, as he wanted. Most of them could be fobbed off with a wad of cash to go score something they’d find they didn’t especially want to share once they had it, but there’d been the odd few where Crowley had decided, why not? It had been millennia since he’d tried sex; maybe it had improved somewhat since then. It wasn’t as if conjuring the physical precursors of desire was difficult. Much like the physical sensations of hunger, which he only ever bothered with when Aziraphale was pestering him to try this or have a bite of that, it simply wasn’t something Crowley took any particular pleasure in experiencing.

It turned out sex had improved somewhat since the last time he’d had it, and that it still wasn’t worth all the fuss. But the experimentation gave his reputation a bit of a spit-polish, gave him that last needed bit of camouflage he’d wanted to blend in with the crowd, and put a little extra bait on the hook when it came to Sally and Spike. 

He’d played the gentleman with them so far, interested but not overbearing. For Sally, a nightcap in the posh room he’d rented just for this little job of his, a kiss that had left her knees weak, and a cab home because of the hour and the neighborhood. For Spike, a frankly appreciative glance when he’d shoved his painted-on jeans too low on his hips and jutted them out, a warm smile, and fair payment for an earlier odd job Spike had done. They wanted, now that they thought it was safe, that he wouldn’t use that wanting against them just because he could--wanted access to his cash, his coke, his body. 

It wasn’t such a bad thing, being wanted. If it hadn’t come with the hourly reminder that he could be wanted by almost anyone but the one person who mattered, it might have almost been worth it.

Presumably that grasp at unearned, undeserved comfort was what led Aziraphale to the Bentley’s passenger seat, face grim and mouth set, a judgment made of flesh and blood. Crowley’d assumed for a fraction of a second that it was someone from head office, come with an assignment or to tell him the jig was up and he was being recalled for punishment, and then when he’d realized how very wrong he was he’d almost wished he wasn’t. 

Aziraphale, sitting in the Bentley with his limbs close and tight and his hands wrapped around his bag like he was afraid that touching anything of Crowley’s might contaminate him. Aziraphale, refusing to look at him like he could see every filthy, pointless little sin Crowley had committed or tempted someone into in the past year. Aziraphale, and Crowley’s stomach clenched, shame scalding him like the angel had caught him slithering through the dust on his belly.

“I hear things, Crowley.” That quiet voice, shot through with sorrow and still gentle in spite of it. “Call it off.”

And then he’d handed Crowley the holy water like a peace offering, just like that, and Crowley couldn’t help himself. “Let me drop you somewhere.”

Begging, he could hear it in his voice. Pleading. _More, more, please, more. Invite me to dinner, let me take you to a pub, ask me back to the bookshop--_

That one drew him up short. No, not there. If they went there, he wouldn’t want to leave, and then Aziraphale would have to ask him to go, and just the thought of it burned through him like the blow that had struck every last ounce of grace from his being, and he couldn’t...

Crowley clutched the bottle full of burning death in his hands like a lifeline. “Anywhere at all.” 

Just. Not the bookshop.

Not anywhere, it turned out, as Aziraphale got out of the car and walked away. Crowley watched him go, the quiet, snarling war in his chest raging around relief that he finally had something more than his luck and his wits in case Hell came knocking and some strange, shattering grief that he didn’t understand now but that he suspected he would once he realized the true cost of the thermos in his hands.

Suicide pill. That’s what the angel had called it, on that first go-round. Crowley had denied it, but he’d never promised not to. Wouldn’t, if it came down to it--the decision to continue existing or not was his and his alone, and he’d fall again before he gave that much power over him to someone else, even Aziraphale. But whatever he had or hadn’t meant or promised or intended, Aziraphale hadn’t believed him when Crowley told him that wasn’t why he needed the holy water in the first place. The angel clearly hadn’t been happy about handing it over, only doing so now because he didn’t think he could stop it.

Crowley let himself sink back in the driver’s seat and shoved the thermos into his own bag. At long last, Aziraphale was washing his hands of him. That was it, wasn’t it? Every time Crowley had reached for him ticked over in his mind, tallied up like prayer beads running through a saint’s fingers. Every time Crowley had been too quick to offer food or drink when Aziraphale hesitated, artless temptation swung like a mallet against a wedge. Every time Crowley had pushed the point too hard, smiled too wide when he spoke of their arrangement.

He went home to his apartment, stared too long at his statue, and put the holy water in his safe. There was that momentary, mad impulse to pour it over the statue, to see what would happen--perhaps the marble demon would melt, freeing the angel from his eternal grasp--and then it was gone again, and Crowley could only turn and stare dully at the eagle sculpture from the church. The only thing besides them and the books that had survived the bomb, and Crowley couldn’t quite remember what he’d even thought he was doing when he’d taken it.

If he closed his eyes and ran his hands over the surface, there was that sweet crackle under his fingers, like a fever starting at the extremities instead of the core, the consecration leeching back out of the stone like a warning. Was that what the angel felt when Crowley reached for him? Or was it something more, something like grabbing a bare heating element? 

Even without an answer, Crowley could imagine it, his fingers tracing stone feathers, pretending that strength-sapping warmth belonged to Aziraphale instead of a middling sculpture of unfortunate and sentimental provenance. It would be worth the skin-splitting hangover if it was the angel’s wings making him sick, Aziraphale’s cologne and sweat and breath filling his mouth, coating his tongue, making him wish he’d never been created when he could barely lift his head from it the next morning.

Tonight wasn’t the sort of night where he could bear such thoughts, though, and so he didn’t. He simply crawled into bed and went to sleep and pretended the memories that crowded into his dreams had never happened.

* * *

“Godfathers.” Aziraphale beamed at him, that beautiful, innocent smile lighting his face, and extended his hand.

Crowley stared at him for a moment, wondering if maybe he hadn’t quite sobered up all the way after all, and then steeled himself and leaned forward. Aziraphale knew what he was doing, after so long. Crowley knew better than to push it, or look a gift horse in the mouth, after so long. Whatever was running through the angel’s mind, he did an admirable job of not letting it show when he shook Crowley’s hand, held it for a heartbeat too long, made his point. If only Crowley could have kept his mouth shut when Aziraphale said, “I’ll be damned.”

There it was again, that soul-crisping pity, this time mingled with fear.

Fear, and for what? Everything and nothing and the things that slipped through the cracks in between the two. Crowley wanted to soothe it away, wanted to gather Aziraphale in his arms and wrap his sulphurous shadow-wings around them both and keep him safe from the phenomenal clusterfuck everything had become. A charming picture, that. Surely Aziraphale--tidy, fussy, gentle Aziraphale--would welcome the gesture.

“Yes,” he’d say. “Please, don’t mind the blackening skin or the shuddering pain or the stifled horror, just keep up with the utterly pointless display of chivalry.”

It was stupid, and worse, counterproductive. It blunted his edges and dulled his senses, and he’d need everything he had to make it out of this with anything at all intact.

Home was less a help than it should have been. He’d been backsliding since he’d appropriated the eagle sculpture, leaving books and pillows and silken robes scattered around his bedroom and adding a comforter that had turned out to be cream instead of the stark white he’d intended. There were nights he’d slept on the couch because he couldn’t bear to face what he’d done to the bedroom. 

Yes, he had his lovely red-streaked crypt-lid of a table and the lone chair that was more of a throne, with its sumptuous gold leaf and every last inch of it carved by the hand of a master. Yes, he had those gray-slab walls and that harsh blast of daylight illuminating everything and the Louis XIV chair in the corner dominating the layout. It had, in fact, been selected to recall Hell and project a palatable persona when head office checked in. And framing it all: a garden where he was the unquestioned lord and master. 

He’d even put the television in a spot where whichever Duke was pestering him this time could see every last speck of power-hungry ostentation in full color and from a flattering angle. If one of the grand conveniences of the modern age was having Hell interrupt the newscaster whenever they needed to tell him something instead of meeting him at a crossroads or a gallows tree at midnight by prearranged appointment, then he might as well send them an answering message.

 _Ambition. Pride._ Anyone with half a brain would look at it all and say to themselves that Crowley wanted to reign in Hell rather than serve in Heaven. And not simply that he wanted it, but that he’d spent some time and effort on wanting it. Not exactly what the higher-ups wanted out of underlings, but something they understood. They wouldn’t look any deeper because it was what they expected to see, what he ought to have been. 

If Aziraphale accepted one of his invitations now, after all this time, the angel would see what he’d expected to see, too--Crowley’s sins made manifest. Velvet upholstery the color of blood, funereal marble smooth as glass and gorgeously veined, a paradise in need of a guardian. Best not. Better to never have, but what did it matter now?

Crowley found himself getting to his feet and looking for a bottle even as the thought formed. He could still hear his own voice, pleading with Aziraphale to remember all the things he loved about Earth. Six thousand years of the angel siding with humanity over Heaven, and Crowley still had to get down on his knees and beg. 

_Pick them, pick creation, pick_ me. _Don’t let it all have been for nothing._

But Aziraphale had, and Aziraphale had taken Crowley’s hand, and he’d endured it, hadn’t he? Willingly, as a gesture of good faith. They were in this together, for the next decade, side by side and hand in hand.

Crowley settled his palms on the eagle’s wings and breathed as the sudden, clammy sweat pricked at the back of his neck. It wasn’t so awful, begging when there was a chance of it working. It wasn’t so awful, when the sickening humiliation of it all wasn’t part of the point, when the person he was beseeching honestly had to be talked around to the prospect instead of simply enjoying the sight of Crowley on his knees, groveling.

Aziraphale wouldn’t, would never, _could_ never.

Crowley let his hands drop to his sides, panting. This was what it would be like, if it was more than a brief touch. It would. He shouldn’t want it, shouldn’t have to remind himself of it, shouldn’t already be thinking of how it would be worth it anyway.

Ten years. Crowley ripped the glasses from his face and hurled them across the room. He’d signed himself up for ten years of this, with no respite, and he’d been so utterly enthralled with the prospect, hadn’t he? Not that there was much choice. Not if he wanted to keep things the way they were, with humanity chugging along and himself out of Hell and, maybe, if he was lucky, with his oblivious, smiling tormentor somewhere Crowley could keep an eye on him and make sure he was happy and out of danger.

Ten years. It would pass in the blink of an eye, even if it dripped by like the first blushing thaw after a long winter. Ten years was nothing.

Crowley took a deep breath and let his wings spread in full, let the threads of scar tissue stretch and pull tight, stinging like a scattering of ants. He was a demon. He was one of Hell’s favored agents. He had freed humanity from its ignorance and servitude. If he’d survived the Fall, if he’d survived Hell, if he’d survived Earth, he could survive this.

He let his wings sink back into nothingness and poured himself a glass of wine. And if he couldn’t, well, then it’d be someone else’s problem, wouldn’t it?

* * *

Crowley gripped the wheel of the Bentley and glared at the road as if it had personally wronged him. Maybe it had. He’d been driving a long time now; it was statistically likely that this road had contained a bad pothole or a particularly difficult curve or something to justify him glaring at it instead of looking at the angel in the passenger seat.

Crowley had fucked it all up, and still somehow Aziraphale wasn’t angry with him. Crowley had thrown a panicky tantrum, and Aziraphale had not only not reproached him but had thrown a hand across his chest, without thinking, when Aziraphale had sensed that subtle fluctuation in whatever it was he’d been trying to explain by wittering on about love. Aziraphale had dropped it just as quickly, of course, but the impulse had been there, and he might as well have hit Crowley with a sledgehammer. Six thousand years, and Crowley still wasn’t used to Aziraphale’s little reflexive kindnesses.

And then Aziraphale had been so distressed about his coat, and it had been so clear what he’d wanted Crowley to do, and it had almost been like the angel was teasing him. So why, when Aziraphale had tried to tell Crowley that he was nice, when Aziraphale had tried to compliment him, when Aziraphale had tried to tell him that they had more in common than he thought, had it felt like Aziraphale was ripping out Crowley’s innards with his bare hands? Why had it been as if Aziraphale had gotten his fingers around the edges of Crowley’s face and was about to tear it away and show the world what a serpent looked like, stripped of all its pretensions?

And why in the name of all that was unholy had he dug his hands into Aziraphale’s coat and thrown him against the wall? Crowley’s foot pressed harder on the gas pedal, and he tried to ignore the whimper from the passenger seat. He knew cloth didn’t do a damned thing to protect Aziraphale from whatever it was that touching him inflicted. And then Aziraphale had been _brave_ about it, hadn’t winced or cringed or tried to make Crowley let go. He’d just stood there and watched while Crowley had frothed at him like a rabid animal. Like a demon. Like any of this was Aziraphale’s fault.

 _I’m sorry._ Two words--such an easy thing to say. All he had to do was open his mouth and force out the syllables. Aziraphale probably wouldn’t even make him say it, would settle for Crowley obeying the speed limit and exercising due care around intersections and crosswalks and understand what Crowley meant by it.

Crowley had never been so grateful to someone for running into his car and smashing in the headlamp as he was for the American on the bike who picked that moment to spare him from the conversation Aziraphale was owed.

Crowley watched as Aziraphale fretted over the woman, fixing this and mending that. He was never so happy as he was when he was making something whole, and Crowley hated and loved it in equal measure. The angel was never so beautiful as he was when he was at peace like this; the angel never lost his shine so quickly as when he turned from his task to see Crowley standing there observing. 

If Aziraphale couldn’t get away from him and into the comfort of his bookshop fast enough as soon as Crowley took him home, well, that was to be expected, wasn’t it? If Crowley could still feel the soft give of rich cloth under his clenched fists, surely Aziraphale could still feel the scorching heat of a demon’s hands on his skin.

If they made it out of this alive, Crowley decided, if there was anything left of the world afterwards, he’d be damned a second time if he ever put his hands on the angel again.


	2. Mend It All

It wasn’t fair, Aziraphale decided. It wasn’t fair that they should have survived all that, together--survived all that _because_ they’d worked together, been together--only for Crowley to abandon him now.

Maybe a month ago, Aziraphale would have resigned himself to it. A month ago, Aziraphale might have understood that he was loyal to Heaven and Crowley was indentured to Hell, and when the kingdoms called, their soldiers had to obey. A month ago, he’d been confident in his cowardice, his faith in even the most utterly appalling and baffling plans coming down from on high unshakeable.

But now wasn’t a month ago. Now was _now_ , in a world where he and Crowley had derailed the Apocalypse, talked the Antichrist into doing whatever it was he’d done, and tricked Heaven and Hell and lived to tell the tale. Now, they’d faced Satan himself and walked away in one piece. Now, Aziraphale had sat on a park bench and told Crowley that he’d asked Michael for a towel and _she’d given it to him_ , and Crowley had laughed. He’d known Crowley would like that bit, had only done it because it was such an unmistakably Crowley thing to do.

And Crowley had… Well, Aziraphale wasn’t entirely sure what Crowley had done.

“Might have gotten a bit carried away,” he’d confessed lightly, after Aziraphale had given him every last detail of Hell’s botched execution attempt. “Nothing major, of course, but you know--they can be a bit much, can’t they?” Crowley’s lip had curled in that way it did when he meant it and was trying not to show precisely how much he meant it. “Gabriel especially.”

Aziraphale had wanted to grab him by the arms at that, to make him elaborate on it. Gabriel’s face when Aziraphale had called the Great Plan into question… It had promised retribution, and the Archangel wasn’t one to forget being crossed. But Crowley hadn’t offered more, and Aziraphale hadn’t had it in him to try and make Crowley tell him everything, and it wasn’t as if Aziraphale could exactly ask someone else, now, could he?

And after all, it hadn’t mattered, not really, not when they’d gone to the Ritz and he’d even wheedled Crowley into eating something for once--“It’s chocolate, Crowley, you _like_ chocolate.”--and Crowley had dropped him off at the bookshop and come in for a glass of wine and then driven away at a borderline reasonable speed without coming even a bit close to hitting any pedestrians.

It hadn’t mattered when he’d expected Crowley back again the next day or the day after, when he’d looked forward to seeing Crowley begin to uncoil after so many decades wound tight enough to snap. When he could look out the window and watch the Bentley pull up, no flames in sight, and Crowley climb out of it none the worse for wear, and smile too sharp not to cut. Crowley might even take one of his interminable naps on the couch in the shop or start reading books or take up a hobby that didn’t involve tempting people. 

It hadn’t mattered when Aziraphale’d had the daydream of Crowley finally relaxing on beautiful days, with good wine and better company, now that he wouldn’t be constantly scrambling to stay one step ahead of Hell’s infinite and implacable demands. Now that Crowley was free of Hell’s dominion. 

That part hadn’t been, exactly, a relief. Aziraphale couldn’t call it that, because he’d never known, exactly, what sort of fire Crowley was playing with. He’d known the demon was on a shorter leash than he was, that Crowley’s infernal masters demanded his presence with a frequency unheard of in Heaven. Or maybe it was just Aziraphale that Heaven had been in no hurry to see; Gabriel had never been anything but eager to get rid of him, when he turned up. But Aziraphale had imagined that Crowley swanned into Hell, dumped off a gargantuan pile of paperwork with that angry smile of his, and sauntered back topside whistling the most irritating tune he could think of. 

The way Crowley had always been ready to slither out of his skin afterward, jumpy and irritable and too quick to put distance between them, tracking Aziraphale’s movements with an uncharacteristic vigilance whenever he got too close--Aziraphale had written it off as the pressure of the confidence game he was running, complicated by Crowley’s natural rebellion against someone else’s command. Aziraphale had never thought, not for a moment, that Hell had been like… that. 

He’d thought, what? That demons reigned there, and they could make it as they liked, and that it was only sensible for them to make it pleasant for themselves. Heaven had a natural Order, set out by God, and an angel could as much change the design as they could wish themselves mortal. He’d assumed part of the appeal of revolting in the first place was the power to make things as they saw fit. Aziraphale had gotten used to Crowley, was the problem. Used to that kind heart hiding behind the sharp teeth, that sense of justice and mercy still alive no matter how much cynicism and bitterness Crowley tried to smother it under. Aziraphale had forgotten what most demons were like. He’d forgotten what Hell _meant_.

But it didn’t matter now, hadn’t mattered now, because Crowley was free of it. Crowley was never going back there, would never have to go back there. He belonged on Earth now, with Aziraphale and humanity and free will and long lunches in the park and…

And whatever else it occurred to Aziraphale to suggest, once they somehow got sick of doing as they pleased, now that it was just the two of them and they only answered to themselves. Now that there was no need to worry about the dictates of Heaven or the wrath of Hell. Now that they didn’t have to look over their shoulders every time they were together, now that they had nothing to fear just by keeping one another company, now that they could do as they wished and live as they chose.

Except that none of that had happened, because now Crowley wasn’t even picking up the phone when Aziraphale called, and so now that new-found courage and fire and bravado and blind faith in things working out for the best was an excuse to go and pry Crowley out of whatever scheme he’d hatched this time and demand an accounting.

Aziraphale decided that it especially wasn’t fair that this was how he discovered that the last six thousand years had been something of a put-on, or at the very least a game. Crowley had been playing him like a fiddle. 

Not with their arrangement, no, Crowley had always been serious about that. That hadn’t been a ruse--Crowley’s dedication to confounding Hell out of sheer spite was as marvelous and ridiculous as anything else about him. And not with his determination to stop the world from ending--they’d both been too ready to give up on it in that last week, but whenever there’d been a whisper of hope they’d been in the yoke together. 

But Crowley had always been so much more clever than anyone gave him credit for, and Aziraphale had always been so ready to forget who it was that had slipped past him into Eden. All it took was a flash of that too-confident smile and a wink from those golden eyes, and Aziraphale forgot everything, and Crowley knew it. 

Crowley had been playing him, with the invitations to dinner, and the turning up with an old tome Aziraphale had been looking for and a bottle of wine Aziraphale had been partial to, and the fact that he’d ever bothered remembering those things in the first place, and all the other things he’d never had to do, like saving Aziraphale’s books when the church had been blown to bits around them. What else could it have been, with Crowley dropping him like this now that he no longer needed Aziraphale for anything?

No one, least of all Aziraphale, would have faulted Crowley for neglecting those little acts of kindness, and he’d have been in a great deal of trouble if he’d gotten caught doing them. Aziraphale had thought it meant something, because Crowley had meant him to. Aziraphale had come to look forward to the gestures, because Crowley had meant him to. Aziraphale had tried not to like him at first, had claimed not to like him for quite a bit longer, and Crowley could have left it at that, at being useful to each other. Somehow the demon had always seemed determined to make more of it, and, damn him, Aziraphale had let him. 

Aziraphale found that it stung more than it ought, finding out that Crowley had simply been toying with him. Presumably Crowley had meant that too, or no longer cared because Aziraphale was no longer necessary.

It wasn’t fair, and now Aziraphale was the sort of angel who would do something about it, wasn’t he? 

What, he wasn’t sure, because he’d only gotten as far as going to Crowley’s apartment--and wasn’t it strange, looking back and realizing that this was the first time he’d ever been to Crowley’s place, in all the millennia they’d known each other?--and ringing the ridiculous serpent-shaped bell, when he’d planned this. The part where, after the fourth ring, Crowley yelled “Fuck! Off!” through the door from what sounded like halfway across the apartment instead of opening it and letting Aziraphale in was definitely something he hadn’t anticipated.

But he hadn’t spent a week fretting about Crowley not coming by and not picking up for him, hadn’t steeled his resolve, hadn’t come all the way across town just to let “Fuck off!” be the final word between them, had he? And so Aziraphale decided that now he was the sort of angel who would simply manifest himself in someone else’s apartment not just without an invitation but after having been explicitly dismissed, because it was tremendously bad manners, yes, but Crowley had started it.

He found Crowley wearing nothing but a pair of those sinfully tight jeans he favored, twisting himself into a painful pose, and clenching what looked like an awl between his teeth, his hands busy with a broken flight feather.

Aziraphale, it turned out, hadn’t anticipated much of anything, least of all suddenly knowing instead of merely imagining what Crowley looked like half-naked and flushed with his wings fully spread.

“Oh.” Aziraphale stared. Wonder and ruination, and there was something heartbreaking about how stricken those yellow eyes looked when they met Aziraphale’s.

“Angel.” It was barely more than a whisper, and Aziraphale took a step toward him, unconscious of anything but the plea bound up in that single word. Except that whatever Crowley had meant by it, it wasn’t that. He straightened up, furled his wings out of existence, and was fully dressed before Aziraphale had made it a foot, Crowley retreating an equal distance, cool as anything. “Sorry, I wasn’t expecting you.”

“I tried calling…” Aziraphale’s gaze landed on the remains of the antiquated answering machine and telephone set that Crowley had always insisted on using. It was melted half to slag, barely recognizable as what it was, and the stone table on which it sat was scorched black a good six inches on either side. “Ah.”

“Hastur,” Crowley said with a shrug. There was a stiffness to the movement, and Aziraphale recalled the starburst of pain from a crowbar coming down across his--not his, Crowley’s--spine. “Turns out they don’t make them anymore.”

Crowley tugged at his jacket, shifting uncomfortably, and then forced a smile. Aziraphale looked away. Crowley was awful at lying to him--rather bad at lying in general, but for some reason humans always seemed to believe him--and it was bad enough listening to it, he didn’t need to…

More scorch marks, burned into the floor this time, with a thin throw rug not quite covering them. Oh. Aziraphale’s heart seized in his chest.

“Hastur again?” he asked, and he barely recognized his own voice.

“Ligur,” Crowley told him. “Look, there’s a little bakery just down the block, just opened, been meaning to try it, why don’t we--”

Aziraphale almost laughed, barely stopped himself in time. Had Crowley always been this transparent? _Been meaning to try it_ \--it took bribery and cajoling and all the wiles at Aziraphale’s command to talk Crowley into more than a bite or two of anything. The Ritz had been the first time in ages Aziraphale had managed to get him to consume something approaching a full meal, and if saving the world wasn’t a special occasion, what was?

His eyes swept the rest of the room, looking for more, and where had he seen that eagle before? It crushed the breath from him, when he remembered. The church. The night Crowley had walked on consecrated ground for him. The night Crowley had walked into the path of a bomb for him.

“I didn’t know anything else had made it through the blast,” he said quietly. The two of them, the bag of books, and the statue. And Crowley had kept it. Not toying with him after all, then. No, not with that look on his face when he’d realized it was Aziraphale who’d barged in on him, not with the desperation rolling off him now.

“Don’t know what you mean,” Crowley said, too brightly. “As I was saying, this place is supposed to do a dynamite trifle, we should--”

“Why didn’t you tell me they were still trying to kill you?” Aziraphale asked. Or almost worse, trying to drag Crowley back to Hell, to do God only knew what to him once they got him in their clutches. Aziraphale had spent the last week hoping for picnic lunches in the park with Crowley curling up for a nap on the blanket afterwards or late dinners and a nice bottle of port split between them, and all the while _this_ had been happening.

The two of them had only gotten as far as they had by working together; what Crowley had been thinking, trying to deal with this by himself--what Crowley had been _risking_ , dealing with this by himself--was beyond Aziraphale. 

Probably the same thing the demon had been thinking when he reflexively denied the statue’s origins, that showing anything that smacked of vulnerability or need or a heart was out of the question. Had he ever asked for help, before? Aziraphale couldn’t remember, now. It had all been so very carefully phrased, proposed as a mutual benefit if not an outright favor Crowley would be doing for him, in exchange for certain consideration. No, Crowley wouldn’t have asked for help, would he? He might as well have asked for mercy, demanded to know what he’d done wrong before punishment was meted out, pled for justice.

Aziraphale inhaled carefully, counting as he went, and tried to steady his nerves. He’d tear Hell apart brick by brick to get Crowley back if he had to, and he was as certain of that as he’d ever been of anything in his immortal life, but it would be far easier to not have to.

“Wh--” Crowley blinked, frowned, then shook his head. “Oh, no. They’re not, haven’t heard a peep out of ‘em, that’s all from before.” He waved a hand and puffed out his cheeks. “Dunno about your lot, but Hell wasn’t best pleased about me losing the Antichrist on them once they figured out they’d flown the wrong boy to Gehenna. Bit of a row about it, truth be told. Apparently young Warlock was very forthright about Hastur’s deficiencies in the realm of personal grooming.”

Aziraphale exhaled slowly. That bathtub on the platform, with the viewing window just behind it. The audience, waiting to see Crowley boil away into nothing. The casualness with which Hastur had tested the holy water on an underling. The throbbing pain still alive in his back when he’d returned Crowley’s body. The week it had taken him to stop feeling that choking press of foul air and fouler bodies, the week it had taken him to stop smelling the ozone and fire in his own feathers from God only knew what because Crowley wouldn’t _tell_ him, the week he’d spent remembering Crowley hauling himself out of that burning wreckage every time he’d gone to strike a match…

Aziraphale stopped and looked around the room, really looking this time. The gray walls, the emptiness of it, the way none of the halls seemed to lead straight to any of the other rooms, the lone chair at that cold table. This was what Crowley came back to, where he lived. When Aziraphale turned to the… the _garden_ in the far room, Crowley cleared his throat.

“Last chance, angel,” he laughed, and it was as much a plea as that first _angel_ that had escaped him. “I’m buying.”

How many times had Crowley invited him back to his quarters? He’d never expected Aziraphale to say yes. He’d known Aziraphale wouldn’t say yes. He’d kept asking, because… 

Aziraphale rubbed his eyes. He’d assumed it had simply been a part of this thing they’d been doing since that first day in the Garden. Reassuring one another that their little rebellions and bouts of disobedience and questionable judgment wouldn’t lead to anything catastrophic, taking comfort in one another’s company while they had it, trying to influence each other for better or worse.

He’d assumed Crowley would look on it as a moment of triumph, if Aziraphale ever said yes. He’d assumed Crowley kept asking for the way it made Aziraphale stammer an excuse, blush like a virgin, think about what it might mean to say yes, imagine what else was bound up in the invitation. All that time, Crowley had kept asking, and for what? For the same reason Crowley had always brought him little presents, had smiled at him and laughed at him and saved him from certain discorporation, surely. For the same reason Crowley had begged him to come away with him, when Crowley had been convinced the world couldn’t be saved.

Aziraphale had felt it like a slap, when he’d claimed not to like Crowley and the demon had thrown it back in his teeth. After all that time, he’d tried rebuking Crowley, and the answer he’d gotten had been far less than he deserved. After all that time, Crowley had still offered him a place to stay, when they’d assumed the angel had no place left to call home. He’d done it for the same reason Crowley’s answer had always been an immediate and unreserved _yes_ when Aziraphale invited him in. Aziraphale tried to keep the realization off his face; Crowley wasn’t going to feel anything other than humiliated by Aziraphale picking this moment to see the light.

The shame radiating from Crowley now that Aziraphale was here, seeing this torturous fusion of the worst of Heaven and Hell, was painful. Aziraphale wouldn’t have noticed, before, if he’d ever said yes in return. He wouldn’t have noticed, wouldn’t have realized. It was cold and impersonal, certainly, but nothing too terribly far outside the boundaries of human fad and fashion. But now he’d seen Hell, and surely Crowley could read in his reaction plain as day precisely what Aziraphale was seeing when he looked around the apartment. 

Aziraphale swallowed and let it go. They’d talk about it later, deal with it later, once Crowley didn’t seem ready to rip right out of his skin with it. How had he thought this would be such a simple thing? He hadn’t been thinking, he realized. It had all been so much hope, hope stacked on top of baseless assumptions, and now he was standing here and watching the whole misbegotten edifice topple over. There’d been a time when he could have solved so much simply by saying _yes_ , hadn’t there? Or maybe that was another baseless assumption, and that bygone, unspoken word would only have been a tug at the first loose thread. No way to know now, no way to ask. The only way forward was through, carefully and one step at a time and with no room for histrionics.

“Let me help you with your wing,” Aziraphale said.

He could feel Crowley’s stare, even with those damn glasses in the way. Even if he hadn’t been able to, the way Crowley shrank back, drew his arms in and across his chest, would have been enough.

“I don’t need help with my wing,” Crowley told him. There was no bravado to it, no flashing arrogance or sulking strut. This was Crowley doing his best to sound reasonable, to make what he’d said sound like a statement instead of a claim.

But Aziraphale could still see the feral, sweating, desperate frustration that had been on Crowley’s face when he’d appeared in the room so unexpectedly, and he felt it like the cold edge of a blade pressed to his throat. That hadn’t been Crowley’s first unsuccessful attempt to deal with it on his own. That hadn’t been the look of someone who expected their efforts to bear fruit.

“I’m not saying you need help,” Aziraphale said, keeping his voice level. “I’m saying let me help you.” He smiled and took a step forward. “Come on, let’s see what we’re dealing with. Go ahead and unfurl--”

“ _Don’t_.”

And just like that, Aziraphale was dealing with a frightened animal as much as he was dealing with a friend, as much as he was dealing with his own cracking heart. Aziraphale could no more corner Crowley than the demon could corner him, but for all that Crowley seemed to have forgotten it. He backed away from Aziraphale and cast about for an exit, his breath coming faster and his muscles tensing.

“Crowley,” Aziraphale said, letting his hands drop to his sides. “Please. I’m not going to hurt you.”

Crowley laughed, that raspy edge his voice took on when he was panicking or out of ideas or at the end of his rope cutting through whatever bitter mirth was there. God knew Aziraphale had heard enough of that rasp in the past few weeks to last him the rest of eternity. God knew he’d never wanted to hear it again. He’d hardly ever heard it before, gotten used to Crowley being laconic about what he couldn’t change and pragmatic about what he could. Aziraphale had taken not hearing that rasp for granted, had taken it for granted that he could do something about it.

“I’m hardly worried about _you_ hurting _me_ , angel,” Crowley snapped, his fingers curling tight into fists. Everything in his posture screamed that it was a lie, that Aziraphale might as well have been offering to run him through.

“Then let me see to your wing.” Aziraphale tried for a reassuring smile, but he could feel the way it didn’t reach his eyes. It wasn’t fair, that they’d come through so much and he was somehow losing Crowley now that they only had each other left. A week ago, Crowley had all but told him the whole of the Earth didn’t matter, so long as they were together, and now Crowley was flying into a panic at Aziraphale offering such a small thing. “I’m rather good at it, you know. Comes from all that time spent repairing book bindings. Deft hand with the shears and the glue, and all that.”

He tried another step forward, and Crowley jerked back, brows furrowing over his glasses, and Aziraphale wished he could see Crowley’s eyes.

Crowley shook himself. “You don’t--you don’t owe me this. You don’t owe me anything, angel. We’re square.”

Aziraphale opened his mouth and closed it twice before he found the words he was looking for, before he could find any words that weren’t oaths. Of course he did, but that was hardly the point, was it?

“Owe you? Square? God’s sake--” Aziraphale regretted it the moment he saw the stifled recoil ripple through Crowley’s frame, but there was nothing else for it but to keep going. “--this was never about owing or being owed. We’re friends. I love you.”

He hadn’t meant to say the last, but it was true, and it had taken him too long to say it, and he couldn’t quite take it back even as Crowley laughed bitterly.

“You love me.”

“Yes.” He _wouldn’t_ take it back. Crowley might have had the capacity to accept love beaten out of him by the Fall and six thousand years of Hell, but Aziraphale had meant it.

Crowley tossed his head and sneered, but Aziraphale could tell by the angle of his face that Crowley wasn’t meeting his eyes behind those glasses. 

“If you love me so damn much, then you fucking well know why I’m not letting you… why I don’t want you to…” He broke off like he was choking on it, and Aziraphale forced himself to stay where he was, not to start forward again.

“Well, maybe I don’t love you as much as all that, then,” he sighed, “because I have absolutely no damned clue what you’re talking about.”

This wasn’t how he’d thought any of this would go. He didn’t know why; this was about par for the course any time Crowley and a reckoning were in the same room together. Aziraphale just wasn’t used to being the one in the eye of it.

But he hadn’t stood side by side with Crowley and faced oblivion, hadn’t descended into Hell to keep Crowley safe, hadn’t stood there gasping afterward and tried not to think about _that_ being where Crowley risked never leaving if he got discorporated or found out, all just to fail Crowley now. Six thousand years, and he’d never seen the demon so desperately vulnerable, so clearly at the end of his rope.

“But whatever it is, I’m fairly certain you’re not going to fix any of it on your own, and I’m not letting you injure yourself trying.” Aziraphale tugged his waistcoat down and tried to look as determined as he felt. He couldn’t shake an explanation out of Crowley, not in the state he was in now, but if Crowley would just let him help, maybe Aziraphale could coax the beginning of one out of him. “Now, come here and sit down.” 

Aziraphale snapped his fingers, and the pretty little Louis XIV chair from the corner was in front of him, waiting. 

Crowley crossed his arms, back stiffening. “No.” 

Aziraphale wouldn’t have heard him, if he hadn’t been listening for it. There was none of the steel, none of the fire, none of the brash confidence that he’d come to expect in Crowley’s voice. He sounded defiant, but tired to his core, tired of knowing defiance was all he had. Aziraphale licked his lips. They’d had six thousand years of leaning on each other, when they never even should have spoken. They’d found a way to stop Armageddon, with all the hosts of Heaven and Hell bent on making it happen. They’d found a way to set things right, when they’d all gone so horribly wrong. There had to be something he could say that Crowley would hear now--he just had to find it.

It helped, knowing that Crowley had stopped time because Aziraphale had threatened never to speak to him again. It didn’t help, knowing that Crowley had self-imposed that precise condition, that Aziraphale had never seen him so close to done before. That Crowley might have fucked his way across Soho and back less than a century ago, but here and now Aziraphale wasn’t to touch him, wasn’t to look upon an unnecessary inch of exposed skin.

“ _Crowley_.”

“ _No._ ”

Aziraphale ran his fingers through his hair. If only he could appeal to Heaven, or call on God for help. “Please.”

Crowley’s fingers were digging into his own flesh hard enough to make divots, hard enough that he had to be hurting himself. Aziraphale wanted to pry his hands open, gather the demon in his arms, hold him; he schooled his expression and kept himself in check. If Crowley _did_ flee, Aziraphale would have no idea where to look for him. When they’d fought before, Crowley had always come back on his own, but this was now, and Aziraphale didn’t dare let Crowley out of his sight.

“They tried to burn you, angel.” Crowley looked away, shuddering. “They didn’t, no--I know. But they would have. They tried so very, very hard. If you think I’m going to let you burn yourssself on me while Heaven looksss on and _laughsss_ …”

Crowley let out a long, slow hiss, and a shiver ran down Aziraphale’s spine. Crowley hadn’t slipped like this before, not once, not around him. He’d never let the serpent’s voice creep into the man’s mouth.

“Burn myself on... What are you talking about?” Aziraphale pursed his lips and tried to dig through the rubble of their post-switch conversations, all the things they hadn’t been saying, all the things Crowley had obviously been avoiding. Nothing--he could remember nothing that would make touching Crowley burn him. Then again, if they’d been trying to punish him…

_Your boyfriend in the dark glasses._

Aziraphale shook his head. They’d been trying to kill him, not consign him to some theoretical celibacy in the event that Crowley really had been seducing him. And Aziraphale would have known--it would have been in play when they’d switched back. But no, he’d felt nothing but relief when he’d touched Crowley’s hand.

“Crowley, what _happened_?” Aziraphale demanded. “I mean, obviously, don’t start throwing hellfire around for no reason, that would be less than ideal--frankly dangerous, really--but, just you? You’re not going to burn me.”

Crowley shook his head, his shoulders curling in even as he took a deep breath. “I’m not an idiot, angel. Six thousand years we’ve spent working the same circuit. I know why you didn’t spell it out--hardly the sort of thing you want the Adversary knowing about--but you really think I haven’t noticed?”

“Noticed what?” Aziraphale cried. It was like being trapped in a conversation with Gabriel, talking at cross-purposes with the fate of the world hanging in the balance. “You’re not making any sense!”

“That touching me hurts you.”

Aziraphale stared at him. Where had he possibly gotten that idea? In those early, pre-arrangement years, it seemed like every time they ran into each other, there would be some little temptation, golden eyes flicking over him like a caress, a slow, meaningful lean into his space until Aziraphale could feel a blush creeping up his cheeks.

_Drink with me, angel._

_Eat with me, angel._

_Come home with me, angel._

It had driven him to distraction at times, that soft, cool flesh close enough to touch, that wondering if there was a point where Crowley’s skin gave way to scales or how round those slit pupils might get if Aziraphale combed his fingers through that unruly copper mane or what Crowley might let him do if he followed the demon back to his quarters. It had been an obvious temptation, though, a demon throwing a gauntlet down at an angel’s feet. He hadn’t meant it. And like any of the other theatrics Crowley hadn’t meant, Aziraphale had… 

He’d given ground before it, shrinking back, pulling away, trying to stamp out any flicker of interest. He’d played his own part to the hilt, unassailable, righteous, untemptable.

There had been times when it even _had_ hurt him, the thought that Crowley would still bait him like that at the worst possible moments. He’d let Crowley see it, too, hadn’t he? The pain of such a small, gratuitous betrayal coming at the wrong time wouldn’t be so easily distinguished from physical pain at that proximity. 

Aziraphale tried to think of a single time in the last millennium that Crowley had touched him without being half out of his wits with worry that the world would end and there was nothing they could do to stop it. They’d shaken on being godfathers, Aziraphale offering his hand and Crowley staring at it like it might burn him. But not him. No. 

Aziraphale rubbed his eyes. He wouldn’t cry, not here and not now with Crowley already looking like he wanted to crumble in on himself and dissolve into nothing, not with Crowley’s nails already digging into his arms hard enough that Aziraphale could only hope he wouldn’t draw blood.

“Touching you does not burn me, Crowley,” he said firmly.

Crowley’s lips curled back, the smile bleak and despairing and Aziraphale had been so, so blind. He crossed the room to Crowley, not faltering this time when Crowley shrank back and hissed at him. He took Crowley’s wrists in his hands, brought them up, and rested the demon’s clenched fists against his chest.

“Touching you doesn’t burn me,” he repeated quietly. He let go, curled his fingers in Crowley’s hair, and carefully took off his glasses. Crowley’s hands found Aziraphale’s coat, clutching at it without meaning to. “Touching you doesn’t hurt me. It won’t.”

“But--” Crowley closed his eyes and went stock still when Aziraphale ran his thumb over those too-sharp cheekbones. “You always flinched. Even when you weren’t paying attention, whenever I--” 

He tried to twist away, his eyes flying open and his pupils contracting to thin black lines, and Aziraphale seized him and held fast, gentle but implacable. If Crowley ran, Aziraphale wouldn’t be able to stop him. If Crowley fled, Aziraphale wouldn’t be able to follow. He could only trust that Crowley wanted him to be telling the truth.

“I promise you, there has never been a time when you touched me that I wasn’t paying attention. I thought you were tempting me.” He stroked Crowley’s hair, tenderly following the tense curve of his neck down to his shoulders. “You _were_ tempting me, honestly.”

Crowley shook his head weakly, and his hands trembled against Aziraphale’s chest.

“Sit down, Crowley. Let me see to your wing.” Aziraphale leaned forward and kissed him softly on the cheek. “Please.”

Crowley let Aziraphale guide him to the chair and press him down into it, knees spreading to fit the chair’s back between his thighs and spine stiff even as he rested his chest against the ornately carved wood and lush upholstery. Aziraphale never once let go in case Crowley bolted or mistook it for a sign that Aziraphale was lying to him. Crowley crossed his arms over the back rail, nails digging into the scarlet velvet instead of his own skin, and Aziraphale let his hands rest on Crowley’s shoulders.

“It’s all right, love,” he murmured. “We saved the world. We saved each other. Trust me.” 

Crowley buried his face in the crook of his arm, and a shiver ran through his frame. The jacket and shirt vanished, and Aziraphale found himself touching Crowley’s bare flesh. There were no scales, no scalloped hints of something other than a human, just adrenaline-blanched skin blossoming into a broad, grotesque bruise. 

“Oh.” He’d assumed it wouldn’t be this bad after almost two weeks of healing, hadn’t been prepared to see the painful mottling spreading across Crowley’s back, and now Crowley was surging up out of the chair, fear given focus by that heedless gasp. “Still, Crowley--be still!”

Crowley was shaking in his hands, but he obeyed, and if that wasn’t its own miracle, Aziraphale didn’t know what was.

“The first thing, I think, is to take care of this.” Aziraphale let his fingertips skate down Crowley’s ribs, not touching the bruise but making his meaning clear. 

He swallowed, mind shifting unbidden to what it had been like, watching Crowley get dragged away from him, bound and gagged and suddenly in the power of a Heaven that could destroy him in an instant if anyone guessed at what they’d done. The blow that had landed on Aziraphale’s back and given him something else to worry about had almost been a mercy, but then they’d been trying to hurt Crowley when they’d brought him down. It had been impossible not to wonder, before he’d blacked out--if Hell guessed the ruse, would they simply destroy him, or would they claw Crowley back from Heaven and make him suffer before killing them both?

Aziraphale shook it off and focused, repairing the broken vessels and the damaged tissue and clearing the last of the discoloration. 

“See?” he asked, running his hand down Crowley’s back. “All better, with neither of us harmed.”

“Don’t patronize me, angel,” Crowley growled. But he didn’t lift his head, and he didn’t stop trembling, and Aziraphale didn’t feel the least bit bad about resting his hands on Crowley’s shoulders. Six thousand years, and how many of them had Crowley spent convinced that Aziraphale could feel only pain at his touch? If he’d known, he’d have…

Aziraphale thought back. So many opportunities. He’d have taken any of them, all of them. But now, there was only this, and he’d be damned if he let it go. “Wings, please.” 

For a long moment it felt like Crowley might not let him, after all, and Aziraphale held his breath. Then the coal-black wings flicked into existence, splayed out awkwardly between them, and Aziraphale couldn’t help but run his fingertips along the downy juncture of skin and feathers. Crowley stiffened against the back of the chair and moaned softly, and Aziraphale’s cheeks colored. 

When he trusted his voice again, he asked, “That didn’t hurt, did it?”

“No.” Crowley didn’t move. “No, it’s not… painful.”

“All right. Let me know immediately if that changes, yes?” Aziraphale did it again, half to feel the soft smooth silk of those feathers against his skin and half for the way Crowley could barely check his reaction. How long had it been since anyone had touched him like this? Aziraphale tried to pour reassurance into every inch of it.

Aziraphale traced the blades of Crowley’s wings, feeling for anything tender or out of place or too warm. So long as Crowley was letting him, he might as well do it right, cram every bit of care and conviction that he could into however long Crowley would tolerate him fussing. And it had been his experience that flight feathers didn’t just spontaneously come apart--something had caused it, and likely quite a few other problems for good measure, and that was before anything new Crowley might have done trying to fix it without being able to properly reach. It would be perfectly like Crowley to brush it off once the worst of the damage was fixed, too, like covering a scorched floor with an area rug.

And besides, Crowley had such beautiful wings. Aziraphale had always wondered what they looked like in their full glory, spread and proud. The demon usually didn’t manifest them, and when he did, he tended to keep them tucked tight against his back, barely moving unless he needed them for balance. When Aziraphale got to the outer edge of the wing with the damaged feathers, Crowley twitched it out of Aziraphale’s hands and half-closed it against his side.

“You’re injured,” Aziraphale said quietly, his mind skipping over everything that had happened. When had--

“No. Just,” Crowley shifted in the chair, “give me a moment.”

Aziraphale circled him slowly, drinking in what Crowley looked like with the bruise gone and his defenses as low as Aziraphale had ever seen them. He wished Crowley had left his hair long, but then a shorter cut had never been unflattering on him, either.

“There’s no need to stare,” Crowley said, looking away, gaze flitting from sculpture to sketch to the scorch mark on the table. “You know what I look like.”

“You’re beautiful.” Aziraphale tilted Crowley’s chin so that he was looking at Aziraphale and nothing else. He needed Crowley to believe him, when he said it. “And yes, I knew it, but it’s not often you let me see it.”

Crowley pulled away then, loosening his deathgrip on the back of the chair and examining Aziraphale’s hands instead. Looking for blisters or redness, Aziraphale supposed. Well, let him, if it would chip away at that calcified fear, if it would help him believe Aziraphale when he said Crowley wouldn’t hurt him. Crowley’s touch on his hands was feather-light, and Aziraphale wanted to shiver at it. Beautiful, misguided demon.

Though it wasn’t as if Aziraphale hadn’t taken every opportunity to undermine the fragile trust that had evolved between them, once everything had started to fall apart and they’d needed each other more than ever. _I don’t even like you._ It hadn’t sounded like the truth any more than Crowley’s claim that he wouldn’t even think of Aziraphale once he’d gone, but it had been such a casual bit of cruelty. 

Who else had Crowley had, by that point? Barred from Heaven for millennia, God not listening, Hell ready to tear him apart for trying to protect the world. Aziraphale had been stubbornly clinging to what he thought was his duty, and he’d tried to turn his back on the only true friend he had in the whole rotten business. Small wonder that simply saying something was so wasn’t enough for the demon these days.

Aziraphale took Crowley’s hands in his and rubbed them gently, kneading the muscle between thumb and forefinger, then moving on to the blade of the palm. Crowley didn’t lift his eyes from the sight, his jaw tight and his throat working noiselessly.

When Crowley finally settled back down, he crossed his arms over the back of the chair, really leaning on it now instead of clinging to it for dear life. He rested his chin on his stacked forearms, a mulish expression on his face in place of the dazed look he’d worn earlier. “Flattery doesn’t suit you.”

“It’s not flattery.” Aziraphale cocked his head, not bothering to keep the fondness out of his smile. “We’re not made for it, you know.”

When he held out his hand, Crowley grudgingly spread his wing again, and Aziraphale didn’t miss the look of pained relief that flashed across Crowley’s face when Aziraphale began straightening the damaged flight feathers. They were singed in a few places, crushed in others, but only three were irretrievably broken.

“The Bentley?” Aziraphale asked. He waved a hand, and his repair kit appeared on the table. He’d do what he could for the damaged ones to stop them catching or rubbing at the undamaged feathers around them, then see what could be done for the broken ones. It was a shame he couldn’t just perform another miracle, but it was one thing to heal Crowley’s borrowed corporeal form and quite another to apply the power of the divine directly to a demon’s true self. God only knew what would happen if Aziraphale tried, but he was quite sure it wouldn’t be anything either of them wanted.

“The bookshop,” Crowley said, holding himself so carefully still that Aziraphale knew his work was edging into discomfort.

“How did the bookshop do _this_?” Aziraphale surveyed the damage with a different eye. A mortal fire--even an impressive one in an old building full of dry kindling--shouldn’t have been able to hurt a demon’s wings, and Crowley wouldn’t have hung around just to have a ringside view of Aziraphale’s life’s work going up in smoke. “You didn’t catch yourself on the edge of the summoning circle, did you?”

Even without the portal being open, it would have had enough power flowing through it to hurt an unwary demon. Crowley usually wasn’t so careless, but then the Apocalypse had seen them all do things they’d regret, things that hardly seemed real.

“Barely brushed it,” Crowley grunted. “Probably a combination of one of those gargantuan bookshelves giving way and then the fire brigade lending a hand with the water cannon.”

Or maybe Crowley would have hung around and watched Aziraphale’s other great love die. He frowned and worked a dab of oil into the singed barbules, and then realization dawned. “You were looking for the book.”

“I was looking for you.” Crowley said it like it pained him to admit it, and Aziraphale supposed he deserved that, at least a little. Maybe more than a little, when he remembered the devastated look on Crowley’s face when he’d called Aziraphale his best friend and Aziraphale had pretended not to understand. He’d been trying not to make it worse, not twist the knife that much harder.

“I’d already been discorporated,” Aziraphale pointed out, as if that might change anything.

“Well, I didn’t know that, did I?” Crowley snapped, almost jerking his wing out of Aziraphale’s hands.

He could picture it too clearly, Crowley going deeper and deeper into a roaring inferno, refusing to turn back when everything said he should. After the Fall, what better angels were going to prevail with Crowley when he thought he needed to act? It was uncomfortable, thinking of Crowley doing something so monstrously stupid for his sake. Then again, they were both alive only because they’d done something even more monstrously stupid for each other.

“I’m sorry.” Not that it had been his fault, no, but it was also hardly the only thing he was sorry for. Crowley lowered his head, and his wings drooped, and Aziraphale seized the opportunity to make quick work of everything he could.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Crowley said, after a moment. “I knew better. It was just.” He took a breath. “I had to be sure that it was… that you were beyond help, before I gave up. Not like they were going to send you back, were they? Not in a body. Not as an observer.”

“No. No, they weren’t,” Aziraphale agreed. He’d have been part of the rank and file, waving a sword around and fighting a horde of demons and probably acquitting himself quite badly, and Crowley would have been on his own trying to stuff the genie back in the bottle with likely as much success. “These three need to come off, I’m afraid. Where are your spares?”

Crowley twisted around in the chair to look at him like he’d sprouted horns and suggested tempting a saint. “My _what_?”

“Your spares.” Aziraphale pursed his lips. Not that he personally had enough to stuff a pillow with, but everyone kept some feathers from their last molt just in case. “A few primaries, a few secondaries, a smattering of coverts? Never can tell when you’ll have a fight with, ah, the forces of evil and come out a bit the worse for wear?”

Aziraphale even had a full set of alulas for each wing, because if there was anything he wasn’t going to put up with catching on everything whenever he turned around or stretched, it was those useless things. That, and his association with Crowley had made it seem more rather than less likely that he’d wind up needing replacements in spite of the official undercover nature of his assignment.

Crowley stared at him, eyes narrowed. “Do I want to know who you plucked yours out of, or is that best left unasked?”

“You just keep the ones still in good shape when you molt,” Aziraphale said, brows knitting. “Wrap them in oilcloth, put them somewhere safe--I mean, really, this has been standard practice since, ah. Well, since your lot decamped.”

Then he understood the full implication, and he sighed. Hell had been filthy, and it wasn’t as if Crowley led a quiet life. He was constantly flitting about interfering with public construction projects here and fornicating with beatniks there and always, always rocketing around in that car at the most reckless speeds. And maybe demons wore their battle scars proudly, little bits of proof that they’d done their part and no one could question them on it. Whatever the reason, Crowley didn’t have any spare feathers, and the best Aziraphale would be able to do was clip them and wait until their replacements grew in. 

“I haven’t gone through a molt since the Fall,” Crowley told him, his shoulders drawing up uncomfortably. 

Aziraphale blinked, and too much of what he was thinking showed on his face, or maybe his fingers tightened on Crowley’s feathers when he stifled another disastrous “Oh!”. Crowley’s posture went stiff, and his gaze went to the floor, and he tried to pull his wing out of Aziraphale’s grasp. The angel didn’t let him. There’d be no bringing him back to this point; Aziraphale could only hope to keep him here.

“These aren’t going to grow back.”

“The Antichrist just pulled the plug on Armageddon, who the hell knows what will or won’t happen anymore?” Crowley said, his wing flexing harder. 

He wasn’t floundering or thrashing, though--it was a fit of pique, not panic. Aziraphale curled one hand firmly around the blade of the wing, and Crowley subsided. Aziraphale took some solace in it not being a fight Crowley particularly wanted to win.

“Probably not, no,” Crowley admitted quietly, as if Aziraphale had extracted the confession under threat.

“Do any of the others still molt?” Aziraphale tried to think back through what little he’d really been able to see in that suffocating, dimly-lit plague-house. No one except that poor doomed messenger had been manifesting their wings, either because of the company or the ever-present grime or the way it was cramped enough only having to worry about arms and legs.

Crowley shrugged, the stiffness in his shoulders this time having nothing to do with physical pain. “Beelzebub practically never stops molting, except the spent feathers all come out as flies, and Dagon’s just down to skin and bone on hers, but I think she plucked them on purpose for the effect.” Aziraphale tried not to betray how his gorge rose at the thought of ripping out his own feathers. “Beyond that, I haven’t seen anyone else’s in eons. Not exactly the sort of thing we have long heart-to-heart conversations about, and everybody’d be lying through their teeth even if we did.”

It had been a vain hope, anyway; it wasn’t like another demon would be willing to share and share alike. Not before he and Crowley had done what they’d done, and certainly not after.

“I could use mine.” Aziraphale ran his thumb over the follicle bed. Scars threaded the skin, small enough that he almost hadn’t noticed them.

Crowley shuddered, and Aziraphale tried not to let the reaction sting him. It was one thing if it was just for a bit, wasn’t it? Quite another thing if it was forever, or at least until the spheres caught up with them both. Would he have had a different reaction, if it had been Crowley making such an offer? A little whisper in the back of his mind cried _yes_ , but it was an easy thing to think and perhaps not such an easy thing to put into practice.

“They’d hardly take, would they?” Crowley asked. “Just trim the damn things and have done. It’s not like I need them--I’m a serpent, not a hummingbird.”

“Hardly--” Aziraphale frowned. “They’re feathers, not lungs.”

“Angel feathers,” Crowley pointed out quietly.

Aziraphale let his fingers drift through the down between Crowley’s shoulder blades again, and Crowley caught his breath.

“You said this wasn’t hurting you.” Crowley arched when Aziraphale’s fingertips slipped down and touched skin, spine dipping and wings flaring. The damaged patch was obvious, when he did that. The feathers would catch, be constantly plucking at their fellows. Nothing would lie quite right. Crowley would always be feeling it. “That hasn’t changed, has it?”

“No.”

“Then why wouldn’t they take?” He might as well have been walking a tightrope. How much could he offer, how much could he show, without Crowley scrambling back behind his defenses? “Touching you has never hurt me. Touching me isn’t hurting you. From where I’m standing, a feather is a feather.”

“They’re yours,” Crowley said. “You’ve kept them around for a reason, angel.”

“Yes--emergency repair jobs.” Aziraphale let his thumbs trace the corded muscles that attached to those lovely wings, and the noise Crowley made in the back of his throat made Aziraphale want to gather the demon into his arms and not let go. “I’d rather you be whole than not. Please.”

“All right.” 

A hoarse whisper, but enough. Aziraphale indulged himself in a few more gentle strokes before returning to his tool kit. Glue wouldn’t be enough for permanent, would it? Glue and a sturdy thread, then, the replacements sewn into place tight enough that they’d never come loose. Crowley turned his head so he wouldn’t have to see Aziraphale work once the shears came out, but the demon held still for him nonetheless. Six thousand years of Hell, and Crowley would still let him do this… Aziraphale swallowed and ran a reassuring hand down Crowley’s back.

He opened the rosewood box containing his spare feathers, all carefully wrapped, and selected replacements to match what Crowley needed. Sliding the new shaft into the broken one, stitching it tight to reinforce the glue, careful not to misalign them--Aziraphale couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a repair job with higher stakes or bigger rewards. And Crowley held still, let him work, hands clutching at the chair and face turned away and only the occasional hiss to let Aziraphale know he was still bearing up under it.

“Almost done,” Aziraphale murmured, tightening the joint of the last feather with one final stitch. Crowley shivered then, and Aziraphale rubbed the back of his neck until he relaxed a little. Conditioning and smoothing the feathers took no time at all compared the splicing them, and Crowley sagged in the chair when Aziraphale was finished. The bright white of his own feathers against the ink black of Crowley’s was shocking, but they all but disappeared when Crowley folded his wings.

Aziraphale straightened up and stretched, flexing and curling hands that had been ready to cramp by the end. He caught Crowley watching him out of the corner of his yellow eyes, expression unreadable. Aziraphale reached out and ran his fingers lightly through Crowley’s hair, smoothing it down, and Crowley closed his eyes and leaned into it like a cat. He looked exhausted for all that he also looked relieved, and Aziraphale tried to gauge the layout of the apartment.

The plants were there, the kitchen _there_ , so the bedroom would be… Aziraphale turned. “Ah. Back in a moment.”

It wasn’t that Crowley needed sleep, not really. Going without it wouldn’t harm him the way it would a human. But he enjoyed it, and Aziraphale had found it did wonders for restoring the demon after stressful or traumatic events. This had been too much of both. He’d tuck Crowley into bed, wait however long it took him to sleep it off, and then they’d go to the little bakery Crowley had been so eager to show him and talk about this. All of this.

He had his hand on the bedroom door when he heard Crowley at the other end of the hall. “Don’t.”

Crowley was on his feet, but he was as much slumped against the cold gray wall as he was leaning on it. He hadn’t bothered, or no longer had the strength, to conjure his clothes back, and he wouldn’t look Aziraphale in the eye. Well, he was done retreating when Crowley needed him to stand firm. Aziraphale steeled himself for whatever was waiting behind the door and pushed it open. No more secrets. No more hiding. No more shame. No more trying to bear up under things separately when they were so much stronger together.

Whatever he’d been expecting--and he honestly didn’t know what he’d been bracing himself for--it certainly wasn’t a comfortable, wood-paneled room with warm daylight filtering in from cozily-curtained windows. There was even a wooden bookcase against the far wall, its shelves lined with leatherbound tomes. It was so unlike the rest of the rooms that Aziraphale felt for a brief moment like he’d accidentally manifested back in the bookshop.

“Oh,” he breathed. He looked back at Crowley, who had turned away. “Oh, Crowley.”

“You don’t need to say it, angel.” Crowley hugged his chest.

Aziraphale walked back to him and gently wrapped his arms around Crowley’s waist. Crowley started, began to twist out of the embrace, and then sagged against Aziraphale’s chest when the angel’s grip only tightened.

“Say what?” Aziraphale asked, pressing a gentle kiss to Crowley’s throat. 

It would take hours to say all the things he’d been refusing to say since the Dark Ages, all the things he should have said as soon as they were safe, before they’d ever set foot in the Ritz. Aziraphale closed his eyes and breathed, letting the smell of Crowley’s skin calm him. All the things he should have said when they’d been balanced on a knife’s edge and praying to no one who’d listen that their ruse would work. He’d been so close to never seeing Crowley again, and still, he hadn’t said any of it.

“That I love you?” Aziraphale asked. “That there’s nothing you have to hide from me? That I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you? That I’m proud of what we managed to accomplish together?”

Crowley groaned, a quiet sob of a thing that sounded like it had been dredged up from deep in his chest, and Aziraphale squeezed him gently.

“Though being fair, if I had listened to you, we’d both be bored out of our skulls on an uninhabited planet and Earth would be in a right mess,” Aziraphale continued, smiling against Crowley’s skin. “Come on, shall we? That bed looked quite big enough for two, and comfortable besides.”

“If you’d listened to me, you wouldn’t have gotten discorporated, had to possess an elderly woman with a bad dye job, or almost been murdered by a pack of archangels,” Crowley grumbled. But he let Aziraphale turn them around, let Aziraphale half-carry him down the hall, let Aziraphale deposit him on the bed.

It was as comfortable as it looked, and it wasn’t as if Aziraphale was tired, or as if he even particularly liked sleeping, but there was something about seeing Crowley stripped so bare and so achingly vulnerable that made the angel not want to stray any farther from his side than he had to. He missed the raven-dark wings when Crowley stopped manifesting them, but it did make it easier to press himself against Crowley’s back while they were lying down. 

Crowley’s fingertips traced idle patterns over Aziraphale’s hands and arms.

“Swear this isn’t hurting you,” Crowley said softly, rubbing at the back of Aziraphale’s hand with his thumb. “Swear it on… whatever you want, really, but--” 

He moved to roll over, and Aziraphale held him fast and buried his face in Crowley’s throat. “Touching you has never once caused me any sort of physical pain. I swear it on, ah. Hmm. Whatever I want?”

Crowley hummed an affirmative, and Aziraphale kissed him on the delicate patch of skin just behind his ear. The demon stiffened and gasped like he’d just grabbed a livewire, and Aziraphale smiled.

“I suppose I could swear on this, then,” he said.

“That’s not funny,” Crowley told him, his voice tight.

“It wasn’t meant to be funny.” Aziraphale hugged him closer. “I meant what I said, earlier--I love you. Go to sleep, Crowley. We’ll sort all this out when you’re feeling better, all right?”

Crowley relaxed against him, slowly, bit by bit, until he was pliant in Aziraphale’s arms. After his breathing evened out and deepened, and Aziraphale was certain he was asleep, he let himself drift off as well, the pair of them interwoven too well to be easily separated again.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Cry For Absolution [podfic]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21613210) by [ahundredindecisions](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ahundredindecisions/pseuds/ahundredindecisions)




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